Party like a responsible rock star

The fall semester of school has arrived and with it comes one thing some students look forward to over the summer — the first wave of residence parties.

Some students believe first-week parties can have a huge impact on the rest of the year.

Ashley Kidd, who has seen her fair share of residence parties, said the first week helps set the tone for the rest of the year.

“You meet people that you party with all year,” said Kidd, a 21 year old starting her third year in West Residence. “In my second year, a couple people that I met the first week, I’m still really close friends with and our friendships just got really tighter throughout the year.

“If not for that first week, we wouldn’t probably be friends because they lived in different buildings.”

Mount Royal’s West Residence, pictured, can be a fun place to party, but there are serious consequences for getting out of hand. Photo: Steve Waldner

Although most party responsibly, they can get slightly out of hand. As with any community, there are rules to be followed within residence, many of which can apply to party situations.

Drinking games, underage drinking, possession and usage of drugs and noise complaints are all issues dealt with by the residence advisors and in some cases, Mount Royal security. While they enforce the rules, they aren’t there to spoil the fun, said Bill Spring, Mount Royal’s security manager.

“We want them to have the residence experience—it’s fun,” Spring said. “We all did it.”

“We’re not here as a police force, we are here as a campus security. We are part of the community, and we want them to have the residence experience.”

Not only are the rules in place for partying students safety, but also for the good of neighbours on campus and the community. Karen Parsons, co-ordinator in the Office of Student Conduct, said it’s important to treat residence like any other community.

“I have parties at my house, I have them out in my backyard sometime, and there is an expectation that I would bring it in at a certain point of time,” Parsons said.

While most of the time students in residence can keep things relatively under control, there are always situations that require more than a warning from security. In these cases, not only can students’ right to living in residence be threatened, but also their education.

Since residence is considered part of the Mount Royal community, any actions that happen in residence falls under the Code of Student Conduct, a list of expectations — both academic and non-academic — that students of MRU are expected to follow.

“Many of our students in residence don’t see that there is a connection between their status as a student and the fact that they live there,” she said. “The actions that they have in a non-academic way can have a serious impact on their academic future.”

However, not only can the consequences of misconduct hit the students’ GPA, but often the wallets as well.

One such example from Parsons is the case of a drunken resident student stumbling into another sleeping student’s bedroom after a long night of drinking. Being so drunk, he was unaware of where he was and began urinating all over the sleeping student who woke up screaming.

This alarmed the intruder so much that he ran out of the bedroom, still peeing everywhere — walls, floor and furniture in all.

While genuinely sorry, the student still had to cough up $1,600 to clean the entire unit.

“We want it to be fun; the years they spend in res should be some of the best years of their life. But remember that living in res, with that privilege comes responsibilities,” said Parsons.

While everyone would agree it’s necessary to have fun in residence, it’s important not to become the cautionary tale Parsons tells future students.